The Uncle at Bag End
by paired discontinuity
Summary: Bag End was much livelier now, Frodo mused.


_**A/N:**_ _Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, B74 - write a family scene._

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 **The Uncle of Bag End**

Bag End was much livelier now, Frodo mused. He'd had it for years after Bilbo's little disappearing act with only Sam's shears in the background in the afternoons. And before that it had housed Bilbo himself: sat idle when he'd been on his little adventure, and boarded up tight afterwards to keep the less desirable relatives at bay. He'd had few guests after the party of thirteen. They had much more in these times.

But that wasn't what gave the place life. It was the family beginning to grow in the earthen walls. Sam and Rosie. The newly born Elanor who sometimes refused to stop crying unless her uncle Frodo would bounce her on his lap.

Needless to say, she was quite often left hanging. Her uncle was a busy man, buried in his books and papers, misplacing quills. (They were often snatched by a curious baby.) Even so, if Sam called, Frodo would come.

Like Bilbo, Frodo appreciated the quiet when it came. Perhaps it was just the hobbit way, to prefer the monotony. Or maybe he hoped that the quiet would compel another adventure to his door, would dispel the weary cloud that clung to him, that kept him in the same hard chair day by day...

Or maybe he hoped it would keep that adventure a far-off dream, in the future…

But it wouldn't happen. There was that strange transparentness in his chest time and again, on and off. Always stronger at the anniversary, along with the pain, but there at other times at well. Sometimes, of late, Elanor would be on his lap when that feeling struck and he'd stop bouncing her. She'd take his quills and play and he'd be thinking of that shadowed place, when his soul had been stretched thin…

And then there'd be Rosie scolding, Sam calling, Elanor giggling and drooling all over his lap and he'd be pulled back, pulled into the small adventure that was his life now: Bag End, with a family in it - and it was certainly big enough for a family. Too big for an individual. Too big to let him sit alone and drift off in this transparentness…

But he was restless too. Restless, watching Rosie and Sam and Elanor - a family he wasn't a part of, even if he was friend and brother and uncle.

He envied Sam, who had slipped back to the regular world, the world of the Shire, like a puzzle piece in its proper slot. It wasn't as complicated for him. Whatever he had learned, it had satisfied him, and now the garden, the wife and child, were his great, little journeys, and every milestone made him smile.

"I don't miss the near-death experiences, Master Frodo," he would say.

The "You do" would go unspoken, or perhaps it was buried in the suggestion to take Elanor 'round the Shire for games to play that were like hunting the bugs or sending the missing vegetables to their proper carts and preparing for Merry and Pippin and their second breakfasts.

They made good distractions, at the very least. And at least Elanor wasn't old enough to skip ahead and then run back and tug his tired uncle Frodo up a slope. Though she would squirm when he sat on a post and watched the carts instead of chasing them. Rosie and Sam would chase the carts. But not him.

There was some part of him that had been lost on their journey with the Ring - or found on it. Something he would forever long for, forever chase. And carrying Elanor in his arms and showing her all the different vegetables - and the fireworks when Gandalf came around (he was expecting Gandalf soon too, with a message from the Elves) and rearranging his grip when she squirmed to reach the innocent, interesting things did not fill that void. Nor did the newfound life at Bag End: the garden that flourished far more beautifully than Sam's first, Rosie's voice singing as she did the dishes and hung out the washing, Elanor crying and laughing and making all sorts of other noises only a baby could make - and the resident scratching of quills drowned in them.

Bag End was a home, was a world, but he was just a visitor there now. The echoes of pain wouldn't leave. That empty hole yearning to be filled wouldn't fill. Sam could be content to stay with Rosie and Elanor - and maybe other little hobbits, and Frodo could just imagine that - as well, but he would just be the uncle who sat in his sunlit room writing or thinking and has to be dragged out for fresh air. And he was already feeling weary.

Bilbo would say he needed a breath of mountain air but a walkabout around the Shire tired him. And the elves would say the sea: that undying land that would take the stain on his soul away,


End file.
